Add all ingredients except meat to the crock pot. Stir together gently.
Brown the ground meat, saving the cooked off fat. Put ground meat in crock pot, stirring it in.
Sear the stew beef in the fat from the ground beef. May have to drain some fat off while browning, depending on the fat content of the stew beef.
Once seared, drain off fat, then add the stew beef to the pot, once again stirring everything together.
Cover the crock pot and set to low heat. Cook for 24 hours.

Notes:
– The amount of minced garlic can be lowered if you’re not a fan. I’d recommend at least 2 tablespoons of it though.
– Add chilies at your own discretion. My wife and I have pretty high tolerance of spice. A lot of people don’t. Try starting out with 1 habanero and 2-3 serrano peppers.
– Be sure the coffee is strong. The meat soaks up a bit of the flavor. I usually brew a cup of espresso, but something like a moka pot or french press should suffice.
– My crock pot gets up to a modest simmer on low when running for any extended length of time.

A bit on my background. I’ve been struggling with my mental health, having an actual grasp of something amiss, for about twenty years give or take. What originally seemed like just bouts of hyper-activity as a child became wild swings between depression and being awake for days on end and at all hours of the night. As the years went on, the intensity of these swings became longer and more intense. To boot, I tend to have severe side-effects to any medication that I take, no matter how seemingly benign they may be. Add to this being too poor to afford health insurance, and it made it difficult at best to seek any help.

Eventually I made my way into the employer of last resort, and proceeded to spend five years in the U.S. Navy. The isolation resulting from being around a bunch of folks that couldn’t give two shits about me, along with the geographic isolation of most naval bases, only compounded the depression and hyper episodes I was experiencing with general anxiety. I held up the best that I could, but eventually started drinking pretty heavily to help mask things. This drinking carried over to when I eventually separated from the Navy, and didn’t leave a great impression on the few friends I had from before I went into the service.

Once I was out of the service and had something resembling stable employment, I was able to consider looking for mental help again. The stigma attached to mental health issues kept me from actually doing so for some time, especially considering the constraints of my job. This really bit me in the ass due to getting laid off from this job shortly after I’d finally begun searching due to a reorganization of the business.

A few months later, I tried pursuing help for PTSD through the Department of Veterans Affairs, and had some surprising help when they put me on a medication to help with my insomnia, which helped my mental state to a small degree. Because I was only covered by the VA for a couple years after I separated from the military, my access to this medication only lasted for a limited time. Fortunately for me, I found a way to have it imported from a country that didn’t charge an arm and a leg for the privilege. I wouldn’t recommend outsourcing your medication needs to the folks at home though, as the quality can be wildly different depending on the source.

After a couple years, the medication started to become less and less effective than it had initially, so I stopped taking it. After a few months of not taking it, and seeing as I was gainfully employed again, I decided to take another stab at seeing a doctor to get my mental health sorted out. Through some work with a psychiatrist, I was diagnosed with ADHD and severe depression. While this was indeed some progress, attempts at treating either ultimately failed due to side-effects from various medications. After talking with the psychiatrist, I decided to go back on the initial medication that had kind of worked, if only to take the edge off the depression and insomnia. Even though I knew that the medication wouldn’t offer a permanent solution, it was still better than nothing at all.

Fast-forward a couple more years, and the depression had gotten out of control despite the medication I was taking. After about 9 months of trying to find a psych, I was recommended one by my GP at the time after prescribing me yet another couple of medications that didn’t work for my symptoms. Lo and behold though, this new psych, after assessing what medications had not worked for me in the past, was able to prescribe something that finally worked. About twenty years later, and I finally had something that worked for me.

I realize this may come across as a daunting experience for those facing mental health issues, but try not to give up. I understand that the task at hand may seem hopeless, but after surviving twenty-ish years without effective treatment despite my brain screaming against me, that it’s possible to come through to the other side.

While I’m pretty sure no one is following yet, I thought I would offer a brief check-in. After some weird technical issues with the blog, I think I have everything up and running smoothly finally. Some sort of server-side caching was doing some blog config updates a heck. But enough of that.

I’ve started making an effort to learn to use Docker in earnest. So far, learning to create an image for use in Docker has a bit of a learning curve, but nothing over the top from previous things I’ve learned. Once I have the image creation down, deploying containers based on those images should be a relative breeze. Besides my foray into learning to use Docker, I’ve also begun learning to write code in Python. The syntax and some of the names of things drift a bit from what I’m used to in other languages, but not enough for the language to be daunting. Now I just have to come up with something to actually create using the language.

As far as how I’m doing, I can’t complain overly much. New work is still proving elusive unfortunately, but I continue on with searching. I’m handling this search a lot better than I have in the past, where I would probably have spiraled into depression by now. Speaking of depression, I haven’t had any major depressive symptoms since around April. This new medication seems to be doing a good job of making things manageable on that front, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I do have the occasional small amounts of depression and hypomania, but they’re so small as to be almost trivial at this point. I can work through them and come out the other side pretty unscathed.

Hi all!!! In an attempt to stretch my communication skills a bit, I’ve decided to try blogging again. I’m still not 100% sure what I hope to accomplish with this blog, but the chance to start writing more often won’t be a bad thing regardless of outcome. So with that, hi, my name is Vera and I’ll be your blogger.